1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bill handling device mounted on an automatic teller machine used in a financial institution and the like.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, a bill handling device is mounted on an automatic teller machine used in a financial institution and the like. This bill handling device includes a bill receiving and dispensing port that has a function of feeding bills having been deposited by a user one by one and a function of discharging bills to be dispensed, a bill discriminating portion that discriminates received bills or bills to be dispensed, a temporary storage portion that temporarily stores received bills, a reject store that stores reject bills discriminated as not meeting a predetermined standard by the bill discriminating portion, a bill store that stores and keeps received bills and feeds the received bills as bills to be dispensed or the like, and a bill conveying path that connects these units.
Recently, according to an increase in kinds of denomination values and an increase in storage capacity, there is provided a bill handling device in which bill stores are arranged side by side in a lower part of the device and other portions are collectively arranged in an upper unit in an upper part of the device (see JP-A-8-221636). In this bill handling device, a bill receiving and dispensing port, a bill discriminating portion, and a temporary storage portion are arranged in the upper unit in the upper part of the device and a plurality of longitudinal bill storages are arranged from the front to the rear in the lower part. In this bill handling device, the respective components are connected by a one-way conveying path.
If the components are connected by the one-way conveying path, the conveying path will be complicated. In particular, since it is necessary to convey received bills and bills to be dispensed in an identical direction inside the bill discriminating portion, it is necessary to form a conveying route of a generally figure 8 shape. Accordingly, the bill receiving and dispensing port and the temporary storage portion are arranged in one loop-like conveying route connected to the bill discriminating portion, and the bill stores are arranged in another loop-like conveying route connected to the bill discriminating portion. Therefore, there are disadvantages that the volume of the structure forming the conveying path increases relative to the entire device and the sizes of the bill stores are reduced relative to the size of the entire device.
On the other hand, there is proposed a cash dispenser in which a bill store (a recycle store) is vertically arranged in a laid state, and which is provided with a two-way conveying path which conveys bills in a vertical direction in a linear manner rather than a loop-like manner (see Japanese Patent No. 3815651). This cash dispenser realizes a reduction in size thereof by including the conveying path that can convey bills in two directions instead of bills being looped.